Sweetie Belle slouched in her wooden chair. These things were never comfortable no matter how she rearranged herself. Today’s lecture was on the creation of spells to help with ordinary tasks. These could be spells for folding your clothes, not particularly useful unless you were constantly going to fancy parties, or spells for aligning all of your books on a bookshelf. Useful, sure, but unless your personal library was even half the size of Twilight’s, there wasn’t much need. Simply put: these were spells for the banality of living.

“Now when we consider the usual steps in cleaning a bowl or a plate—scrubbing it with soap, adding it to the drying rack, and then putting it away, we can see these small tasks add up to long periods of time devoted to things we don’t really wish to do. So what if we could do all of those tasks in one simple spell?”

Sweetie yawned. It was the Instruct spell. She had used it several times. Twilight had thought it to her for imbuing a short set of instructions or sequences of tasks in an object. Or, as Sweetie knew it, an enchantment.

“You might think this is a fine example of unicorn laziness. And you’d be right. Why go through the trouble of imbuing a set of spells into various objects to save what? A few seconds on cleaning?” he asked.

Professor Nocht Stern paced the auditorium, looking upon random students. He always did this, but Sweetie knew who he was looking for. She held her breath as his electric-blue eyes locked onto her at last. His lips curled into a smile.

“Miss Sweetie Belle,” he said with a slight intonation. The one he uses when he wants to pretend like he selected her at random.

“Um…” Sweetie glanced at her notes, knowing they weren’t of any help. “Scale?”

Nocht Stern raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking me?” he jeered.

”Scale,” Sweetie repeated in a definite tone. “You might only save a few seconds on any task on an individual task; however, if you enchanted every object to do the same task, you save a lot of time on repeated tasks.”

Nocht Stern gave a slow nod.

“However,” Sweetie continued, “In a certain setting, you could eliminate work altogether!” The might of unicorn was without limit.

Nocht Stern shook his head and laughed. “Easy miss Sweeting Belle, this spell is for small simple tasks. You could maybe collect and stack a bunch of loose papers, but you could never deep clean your room. Some spells don’t play well with other spells.

”That is where I’ll leave it for today. Please read the next two chapters and enchant one object as practice. Remember, simple! Enchant your spoon to stir itself in your tea. The point is to practice.”

Sweetie stretched as she rose from her seat. She was free at least! She left the lecture hall, and crossed the grounds. It was a nice day out, the nicest in a long while. While she was tempted to lay around in the grass and watch the clouds go by, she needed to return to her dorm room and start her next assignment.

Celestia Hall wasn’t far away. It was the oldest and most distinguished dormitory on campus. Twilight herself once lived there.

The halls were narrow and dim, and the building smelled of old parchment, books, and junk food. It was home. Sweetie sighed at the sight of her… less than clean room. She could hear Rarity shrieking in her head.

“Maybe I should clean up a little first…” The floor was littered with various papers, mostly scratch paper, a few books, take-out containers growing yet-to-be-discovered life forms, and a gown she wore to a ball a few months ago.

Sweetie grasped her gown in her magical aura, moving across her small room to the closet and hanging it. “Darn, that could have been my homework right there.”

Sweetie’s ears perked to a soft rapt on her door.

She cracked her door open. “Hey, Moonlight.”

“Sweetie, we are going out tonight to the usual spot. There’s bound to be some good looking stallions and mares about!”

“Oh, um, maybe. I have a lot of work to do—“

Moonlight pushed the door all the way open, revealing Sweetie’s disaster of a room for all to see. “Sweet Celestia, there’s lazy and then there’s this.”

Sweetie gulped. “Hey come on! I’ve been busy with school!”

“You’re right,” Moonlight replied. You are taking more classes this term. Look, if you’re up for it, meet us at 8 out in the courtyard.”

Sweetie groaned as Moonlight walked off. “I’ll let you know!” she called after her.

“Okay, clean this room, read those chapters—na do that tomorrow, use my Instruct spell, review that paper on levitation, and call it a day!” Sweetie’s grin faded fast as her eyes fell upon her room. Her heart sank. It would take hours to clean this room, and the spell was only good for a few simple tasks.

Simple tasks… Sweetie smiled to herself. Of course. What was cleaning a room but a few simple tasks? “This will blow Nocht Stern’s mind when he sees this,” Sweetie said.

Her horn lit up as she formed a clean picture in her mind of how her room should look. Stacking papers was easy. Stacking them by subject? Tricky. Sweeping the floor was simple, and taking out the trash was also easy. She fired her first spell, then the second, and in the split second her third spell fired several things harpooned at once.

Her room glowed like the sun in rainbow light as ever object her room sprang to life. Before she could react, however, there were several screams of panic from in the hall.

Sweetie’s dorm door flew open as several stacks of paper sped by her head. “What the—“ she chased after them, looking into the hall, and her jaw dropped. She spun around looking the other way. The sight before her was sheer pandemonium as ponies ran for the exits.

Books flew through the air at dangerous speeds. Sweetie ducked as several copies of A Guide To Magic stacked and then restocked themselves as if they couldn’t figure out the correct order to be in. Brooms chased after ponies, and bags of trash flew by, crashing into doors.

Sweetie only had seconds to run as her own broom came for her. She ducked her head down and charged through the hall for the exit. She skidded to a halt in the entrance atrium. Several overflowing bags of trash blocking her escape. The entire room was bathed in rainbow light.

She ran down the next hall only to be confronted with a swarm of debris of flying books, papers, and brooms. “How do I-how do I stop the spell?”

The brooms were closing in, trash bags were building up around her.

She never thought this was the way she’d go. The might of the unicorn was nothing to the hubris of one.

Suddenly the room went dark. It was dead quiet for a split second. Sweetie screamed and covered her head as a cacophony of sounds crashed all around her. She waited for the inevitable avalanche of junk to rain down upon her.

It never came.

“Sweetie Belle,” said a familiar voice. “It’s alright, Miss Sweetie Belle.”

She raised her head, opening her eyes, staring into the electric-blue eyes of Professor Nocht Stern. In the background, items were returning to their original locations.

Sweetie gulped under the professor’s stern gaze. “So, um, what happened was—“

”I know exactly what happened. Although, I admit, I’ve never seen a dormitory illuminated in rainbow light before, it was pretty obvious what had happened. You may recall I said simple tasks.”

Sweetie gulped and nodded solemnly. “Yes,” she muttered.

“What you tried to do was far too complex,” he said.

“I-I know. I just thought since they were a bunch of simple tasks I could string them together in a single enchantment,” Sweetie replied. A knot was forming in her stomach.

To her utter surprise, Nocht Stern smiled. “You aren’t the first, nor would you be the last, to try something like this. But you were the first to cause such a large magical explosion. You certainly are a powerful little thing. With proper instruction, you may one day achieve what you set out to do today.”

Sweetie exhaled. “So… I’m not in trouble?”

“You blew up the dormitory with magical light, unleashed a mob of brooms, books, papers, and junk…” Nocht Stern shrugged. “I think that’s a normal Tuesday. You should see what the advanced enchanters get up to.”

Sweetie laughed, but she wasn’t sure he was joking. “Maybe some day. Clearly, I’m not ready for that.”

“On the contrary,” Nocht Stern countered, “you are are. You’ve demonstrated magical prowess, now you need to learn how to refine it.

”The greatest might of the unicorn is learning how to wield your power, and when not to.”